Lessons From Stevens Institute of Technology's Ecohabit

'Green' Home Will Compete in Solar Decathlon

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Stevens Institute of Technology's 'green' home in Hoboken.
Kevin Hagen for The Wall Street Journal

By

Ralph Gardner Jr.

Aug. 26, 2013 10:09 p.m. ET

If some group gave out awards for the least energy-efficient structures—the way those LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) designations for state-of-the-art "green" buildings are handed around—our home upstate would likely make it into at least the semifinals.

The furnace dates from the '60s and burns lots of oil. We have three large hot water heaters. Why three? Don't ask me. The insulation, to the extent there is insulation, includes horsehair from the 19th century—we believe the place was built around 1850, if not earlier—and some sort of foam my grandparents, who bought the place in the 1940s, had injected into the walls in the '70s.

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Solar panels on the roof of the project
Kevin Hagen for The Wall Street Journal

There's also central air conditioning that my mother added as an afterthought when she renovated and enlarged the place in the early '80s. And a sunroom with lots of glass.

In short, the place is probably an energy sieve, and one I'd like to stanch as quickly as possible. I have no illusion that it can be turned into one of those net-zero structures that actually contributes more energy to the grid than it takes, but it would just be nice if it didn't bankrupt me.

In the hope of cleaning up the house's act, I paid a visit last week to a solar house conveniently situated in Hoboken that students and professors from Stevens Institute of Technology have just completed. Hoboken isn't its final destination. "Ecohabit," as it's called, will be disassembled and trucked to Irvine, Calif., where it will be reassembled for October's "Solar Decathlon." That's a biannual competition hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy where 20 energy-conscious schools, such as Stanford, the California Institute of Technology, Middlebury College and the University of Texas, compete in categories such as architecture, engineering, appliances, hot water efficiency, home entertainment and communications to create the most energy-efficient solar homes.

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BioPCM, or phase-changing material, is used to line the walls of the building.
Kevin Hagen for The Wall Street Journal

"Two years ago, we won affordability," explained
Michael Bruno,
the dean of Stevens's Schaefer School of Engineering and Science. "This year, we want to win the whole thing."

Let me state from the outset that I know nothing about electricity (solar or otherwise), plumbing, air conditioning, heating, construction, condensation, etc. I grew up in an apartment. Besides which, I'm mentally, physically and emotionally impaired when it comes to doing anything with my hands more advanced than replacing a light bulb.

My consciousness of such things is pretty much limited to having an intuitive sense of whether something is cool. So let's examine the house from that point of view. From a distance, situated in a parking lot overlooking the Hudson River, the $300,000, 980-square-foot home is way cool, and not just because the New York City skyline served as its backdrop.

The architecture reminded me of one of Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie houses, an exercise in elegant simplicity.

The front of the house is covered in attractive red cedar. Other parts of the structure are clad in a paneling that I'm sure has some sort of futuristic purpose but that resembled sheetrock before it's painted, or wallpapered, and whose appearance I wasn't wild about.

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Ken Trimblett and Dan Munt work on the roof of the home, built by students for the Solar Decathlon competition.
Kevin Hagen for The Wall Street Journal

However, my interest was genuinely piqued when I was shown one of the solar shingles—not panels, shingles—of which the roof was constructed. "This is one of the most innovative things and one of the easiest things somebody who already owns a house can do to make it more energy efficient," explained Claire Griffin, a Stevens sophomore studying mechanical engineering.

"They work like normal shingles but generate energy at the same time," added Liem Nguyen, a senior who is another member of the Ecohabit team.

These devices, donated by their manufacturer Dow Chemical, which include a fully integrated photovoltaic system to power the house, would certainly fall into the cool (bordering on awesome) category.

I mean, I assumed that if I wanted to solar-retrofit my house, I'd have to find a field somewhere or cut down a grove of trees to provide space for the array of solar panels required to power my dishwasher or dryer. It would obviously be a lot easier if I could simply slap a bunch of shingles on the house. The existing ones on the garage are starting to look pretty cruddy, as it is.

There's also a green wall. It wasn't green yet, but will eventually be hydrated by a rainwater-capture system and covered in plants and flowers native to Southern California. Once the Solar Decathlon is over, the house will be donated and turned into a veteran's center on the campus of California State University San Marcos.

I neglected to ask whether such a system of plants could survive a Northeast winter, since there's probably nothing quite as dour as dead plants decorating the outside of your home. On the other hand, it would be pretty cool to have your garden growing up the wall of your house. It would also serve as a thumb in the eye of destructive woodchucks and rascally chipmunks.

In any case, I doubt the concept will be integrated into our house, which seems to invite leaks. Our goal is generally to direct water away from the house rather than toward it.

The inside of Ecohabit seemed as cheerful and airy as the outside, though I was informed that its most novel elements are invisible. The walls include phase-changing materials, or PCMs, that store heat during the day and release it at night.

A recirculating heat pump keeps the water warm in the kitchen and bathroom, so you don't have to run it and waste water. And there are sensors in each room that monitor and send data about everything from temperature, weather patterns, power usage, lighting—even the number of occupants in the room—to a central control system.

"We hope to get to the point where [the system] can make suggestions," explained Mark Pollock, the project's manager and an industry assistant professor at Stevens. "'You've done three loads of laundry and it's kind of cloudy. You should wait until tomorrow,' when it's forecast to be sunny, "'and you won't have to pull as much energy from the grid.'"

More than 60 Stevens faculty members and students contributed to Ecohabit. "Doing this project is part of their curriculum," Dr. Bruno explained. "It draws from every discipline you can imagine and some you couldn't imagine: energy, management, computer science and the College of Arts and Letters."

Jesse House, a music and technology major and a philosophy minor, was fine-tuning a computer program that controls the house's sound system. It seemed to be playing some sort of series of tones. "The music program takes all the data the house is collecting and turns it into soothing background music," Mr. House explained, adding something about brainwaves and the theta state of consciousness.

I want to live in a smart house, but I'm not sure one whose music apprehends and reflects my mood. What if I'm depressed?

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